3rd March: Birth of Alexander Graham Bell

Inventor Alexander Graham Bell was born in Edinburgh on this date in 1847. Here are 10 things you might not know about the inventor of the telephone:

1. He was christened Alexander Bell, without a middle name. However, both his brothers had middle names, and he wanted one too. When he was 11, his father agreed to let him adopt the middle name of Graham, after Alexander Graham, a family friend.
2. His mother began losing her hearing when he was 12, which influenced his interest in sound and acoustics, as well as motivating him to become proficient in sign language.
3. Although bright with a fascination for science, he did not do well at school and left at 15. However, he became interested in study later, and financed his education by teaching elocution, music, Latin and Greek.
4. Impressed by an automaton built by Sir Charles Wheatstone, which was able to simulate a human voice, Alexander and his brother Melville set out to build one of their own, which, by means of bellows, could say the word "Mama".
5. After the death of both his brothers from TB, the whole family, including his brother's widow, emigrated to Canada.
6. Later, Bell moved to Boston, Mass. where he worked as a teacher of deaf pupils. One of his students was Helen Keller. Another was Mabel Hubbard, who he later married.
7. Although most famous for the telephone, he was a prolific inventor. Other things invested by him included a device to locate Icebergs, aerial vehicles, a metal jacket to help people breathe and a metal detector. The latter device was cobbled together in order to locate a bullet in US President James Garfield's body, although it wasn't successful as the President was lying on a metal bed, and the bullet was too deeply lodged.
8. He took a working model of a telephone on his honeymoon, so he could work on it while he was away. Though to be fair to him, his honeymoon did last a full year!
9. His last word before he died was in sign language. His wife said, "Don't leave me". He signed "No", and then died.
10. On the day of his funeral, all the telephones in North America were silenced as a mark of respect.